While I understand that artists would have their own styles, aren't they also hired for a specific job? Wouldn't the ability to be able to match existing artwork be just as marketable as their own unique style? Also, don't they have files to work with? Photoshop or whatever package they use with the basic characters models? Please don't take this as criticism, the work they do is incredible and I have nothing but admiration for them.
We've been very open with our artist search for the past 8 months to have someone do commissionwork on many different platforms related to NSFW art and adult game development. I've asked artists that draws in a similar style that is fans of the original work and they usually politely decline. Finding someone that is both able to work within our budget and spend a lot of time to adapt their style isn't easy because most freelance artists build a brand for themselves and deviating too much from that means that once their time with the game is done people would expect that sort of style.
We see a lot of people complaining about art, I see complaints about literally every character that has been added that aren't the original ones. It's really hard for us to distinguish constructive critisism sometimes when most of what we get is "It doesn't look the same". This mod has been going for 5 years and it's not like we're unaproachable by artists that are want to work on it. Akaburs style is hard to master because it's a bit of a mix between Disney and Anime and it leans in different direction depending on the character and follows different rules than most artists are used to.
Finding an artist that can do the style and is available and willing to work on the game is difficult. There's many things that needs to align for all those things to happen. The fact that there's so much critique being thrown at them when they're still working on adapting their style is enough for a freelance artist to decide against working on a project like this. This project is hard to work on because it's a mod. There's rarely original files to work with and we're in the process of re-tracing/improving existing models to make it easier for artists to work on.
The thing is, we also want the best for the project as well as you guys. The majority of the team joined it because they're fans of it. Art being an issue with it has been obvious since the mod started. I've spoken to other game devs that has had to swap artists before and what we're basically hoping on is the "Third alternative". I spoke to the main dev of "A third Crisis" cause they swapped artist and they redid all of the characters. That's not really viable for us because people wouldn't like that. The other one that I spoke to is the main dev for the "Rogue like" mod, he actually contacted us to see how we dealt with this issue and I was unable to give him a good answer other than good luck. In their case their artist is even talking to the dev of the game to adapt their style. It's a struggle that maybe at some point once we've either worked with an artist to adapt their style, the fans are okay with meeting half way in terms of style so that the project can proceed properly. Or if an artist approaches us showing that they know how to draw in the style to a high enough quallity that people expect.
We're currently working with an artist that is working on adapting their style so we'll see where that leads as well but it's a longer process that has been going since end of June so we'll see if that leads anywhere. We can just ask for peoples patience and take the project for what it is right now, we appreaciate all the feedback and work to adjust things as we go.
